Licensed wireless communication providers have gradually integrated data services into the list of services available to subscribers. The integration of data with voice services has opened a more expansive set of features and functionality not previously available. Features such as accessing the public Internet or text messaging through a cellular telephone are now commonplace.
As the licensed wireless networks continue to evolve, so too do the user equipment for accessing such services. However, integration of the new services has increased the demand on the licensed wireless network as larger blocks of data and more overall data are being routed through these networks. Such added loads place additional burdens on the provider equipment making access to such resources scarcer or slower. As a result, subscribers require greater bandwidth and more efficient utilization of the available bandwidth.
As one example, at the inception of the global system for mobile communications (GSM), only voice services were provided through the GSM core network. By using circuit switched data to provide a dedicated communication channel through to an endpoint, the voice services of GSM were poorly suited to adapt and provide data services using the existing set of core components.
As GSM evolved, general packet radio service (GPRS) functionality was added to the core components of the GSM network to provide data services through the GSM network with little change to the existing core voice network. In contrast to the circuit switching of voice communication, the GPRS elements introduced packet switching allowing for greater utilization of the available bandwidth resulting in greater user access. Through the packet switching of GPRS, a single data communication no longer had to reserve the full bandwidth of a circuit. Rather, the intermittent sending and receiving of data packets was facilitated over a shared communication medium through which data packets of several subscribers were routed.
However, fully utilizing the functionality and data services of the GPRS network required the licensed wireless service providers to integrate with other existing networks such as the public Internet (e.g., to provide mobile Internet access). This form of integration with other networks introduced even greater functionality and sets of services to the licensed wireless network as the data packets communicated over the GSM network had access to the Internet and other communication networks. Routing IP information from user equipment of the licensed wireless network to the public Internet and vice versa now became a viable option for licensed wireless providers.
To provide such data services, service providers implemented specific data service routing and processing components and new interfaces for passing data from and between such components. For example, in addition to the A-interface for voice communications over the GSM network, the Gb-interface was introduced to route data packets between the GSM core network and radio access network. Similarly, in the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN), the Iu-cs interface is used for voice communications and the Iu-ps interface is used to route data packets between the UTRAN and the core network. As demand for data services on mobile devices continue to increase, faster networks and more efficient means to route the data are continually being added to the core network.
Moreover, as the integration between licensed wireless communication networks and data networks have converged, similarly other communication networks are being integrated with the licensed wireless networks to take advantage of the functionality provided by the licensed wireless networks. One such technology is an integrated communication system (ICS) for coupling the user equipment of a licensed wireless communication network to an access point of a second different communication network for seamlessly communicating and passing packet data from the user equipment through the second communication network. An example of such an integrated communication system is the universal mobile access (UMA, also known as “unlicensed mobile access” and “generic access”) architecture.
An effective implementation of such an integrated communication system is to leverage the existing packet data switching infrastructure of the licensed wireless network in order to provide data services equivalent to or better than those of the licensed wireless network. In this manner, a need arises to scale the data services and infrastructure of the licensed wireless communication networks to adapt to and integrate with the other communication networks.
A simple implementation of the ICS includes encapsulating information compatible from one network into a wrapper compatible with the licensed wireless network and further encapsulating the information into a wrapper of the data network (e.g., IP network). However, such encapsulation, encoding, and decoding introduces latencies and additional overhead that is undesirable in a real world application where subscribers continually demand for more information and faster retrieval of such information. Therefore, a need arises to provide improved and efficient data services over a voice and data communication network integrated with the licensed communication network. Such a system should utilize the resources already available within the licensed wireless network while reducing the overhead and complexity associated with providing such services.